The Thieves of the Gulag Archipelago by Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD

In my frequent re-examinations of the epic volumes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, I came across some psychosocial observations noted by the illustrious Nobel Prize-winning author and political philosopher. In Volumes III and IV, I found something about the nature of common thieves in the former USSR, those supposedly “in freedom” (e.g., in the USSR at large), as well as in the gulag’s corrective (destructive) labor camps. We learn for example that in the Soviet Union, even at the height of Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror and bloody purges (at a cost of 20 to 40 million lives), the thieves were considered “socially friendly” elements, and were useful and used extensively by the Soviet government.

The thieves not only terrorized the population, as haters and defilers of private property, but also were used as informants by the police; and in the gulag, served as “instructors” in the cultural and educational sections, or as actual officers by the internal security police (the MVD). Needless to say, they were also useful to the repressive apparatus as the proverbial stool pigeons and enforcers of hard labor and terror against ideological (political) prisoners. When needed, they even worked hand in glove with the security forces in carrying out mass murder in the extermination camps of the gulags.

While citizens were arrested, hauled off to the gulags for slave labor and saddled with long prison sentences (10- and 25-year sentences were typical), Solzhenitsyn wrote:

Sentences [for the thieves] were bound to be reduced and of course for habitual criminals especially. Watch out there now, witness in the courtroom! They will all be back soon, and it will be a knife in the back of anyone who gives testimony! Therefore, if you see someone crawling through a window, or slitting a pocket, or your neighbor’s suitcase being ripped open—shut your eyes! Walk by! You didn’t see anything! That’s how the thieves have trained us—the thieves and our laws!(17)

In the destructive-labor camps of the Soviet Union (1918-1956), the thieves robbed, tortured and murdered political prisoners with impunity. Indeed, they were rewarded with higher food rations, better living space and other privileges for collaborating with the guards and fomenting terror.

It makes hair stand on end when we see that parallels can be drawn between today’s coddled thieves of the social democracy of Great Britain and the erstwhile, hard-left communist dystopia of the former USSR.

And If You Cannot Flee or Be Heard—Shout!

Solzhenitsyn wrote that fear of exceeding the limits of self-defense for individual Soviet citizens “led to total spinelessness as a national characteristic” on the part of the individual and total omnipotence on that of the criminal state. When a military officer, mind you a Red Army officer, defended himself from an assailant and killed the hoodlum with a penknife, the officer got 10 years for murder. “And what was I supposed to do?” the officer asked. The Soviet prosecutor replied, “You should have fled!”(17)

“Flee!” That distant Soviet echo reverberates in modern British society—“Scream, run, shout!”—and not only in the United Kingdom but also in other territories of the British Commonwealth, such as Canada and Australia. In those nations, there is no recognized right to self-defense, and citizens are also told to run and flee from assailants. Human dignity—self-defense, private property—out the window! But what if the victims cannot run and their shouts are not heard? Are women supposed to allow sexual predators to rape them? The British constable told Tony Martin, who lived on an isolated 300-acre ranch, that he should have shouted! The lamentable absurdity is palpable, or laughable, were it not for the indignity suffered by the honest British subjects at the expense of pandering to the base criminal elements.

The incidents in this chapter will help the reader understand why many, in fact the majority of, state legislators in America have applied the Castle Doctrine and passed “stand your ground” legislation, so that Americans have the legal right, as well as moral prerogative, to protect themselves, their families, and their homes with dignity and without having to abandon them. We also have concealed carry weapons (CCW) and “Constitutional Carry” (CC) rights, which will be discussed in Chapter 25.

Like the Soviets, British Subjects Have No Right to Self-Defense

Let’s return to the instructive Soviet parallels, The Gulag Archipelago, and to life in the Soviet labor camps, which for some citizens in the social democracies is looking more and more reflective of what is happening in their soft-left “free countries.”

Astonished we learn (or relearn) from Solzhenitsyn that in the heavily militarized Soviet Union, “The State, in its Criminal Code, forbids citizens to have firearms or other weapons, but does not itself undertake to defend them!”(18) The communist State defended itself ferociously with its famous KGB, the Sword and the Shield of the Soviet State, but the State would not commit itself to defend its citizens from non-political criminals, particularly, the “socially friendly” thieves.

Moreover, Solzhenitsyn wrote:

The State turns its citizens over to the power of the bandits—and then through the press dares to summon them to ‘social resistance’ against these bandits. Resistance with what? With umbrellas? With rolling pins? First they multiplied the bandits and then, in order to resist them, began to assemble people’s vigilantes (druzhina), which by acting outside the legislation sometimes turned into the very same thing.(18)

It is of historic interest that similar scenarios took place in Cuba in 1959 when Fidel Castro, in ascending and consolidating power, called forth his political “vigilantes,” either the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) that envious riffraff flocked to join, or the peoples’ milicianos,  “the militia,” used to intimidate and disarm the opposition and eventually the people at large. The Cuban milicianos, like their Russian counterpart, the druzhina, were used to fight farmers resisting collectivization. The farmers were then demonized as “bandits” and “enemies of the people” by the State.(19)

In the U.S., some people may be afraid to go out at night in the big cities, but Americans have a right to defend themselves, and most states now allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms for self-protection. American women, especially, have an extended right to defend themselves with firearms to prevent being raped or murdered by sexual predators.

Yet, in England, people live in fear in their homes, afraid of muggers and burglars—not even possessing the right to self-defense with any weapon, much less a firearm!

But wait! If this is any consolation, English women do have one “viable” option according to the Police National Legal Database, a website operated by local police constabularies to help disseminate information to the public. In response to a woman’s question, “Are there any legal self-defense products I can buy?” The police responded, “The only fully legal self defense product at the moment is a rape alarm.” Another woman was instructed not to display a knife in order to ward off an intruder and potential assailant. If those examples don’t express the absurd state of natural rights in England, I would be hard pressed to say what does.(20)

One cannot avoid seeing a resemblance between the permissiveness and obsequiousness extended to the thieves in Great Britain and in the Soviet gulags as “socially friendly” elements, as opposed to the abuse and indignities made to suffer by the honest, law-abiding citizens in the British Empire and the political prisoners in The Gulag Archipelago. Are law-abiding British citizens today playing the hapless role that the ideological political prisoners played in the former Soviet Union? If so, who does the British government consider the real domestic enemies—thieves, terrorists, or honest citizens? We are still hopeful that eventually freed from the European Union, the British come to their senses and begin punishing the real criminals instead of coddling them and allowing lawful, honest citizens to keep firearms for self and family protection, and cease their unjust policy of citizen disarmament. In other words, punish the thieves and real criminals and allow the lawful citizens to exercise their natural right of self-defense at home and in the street.

Written by Dr. Miguel Faria

Miguel A. Faria, M.D., is Associate Editor in Chief in neuropsychiatry; history of medicine; and socioeconomics, politics, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). He was appointed and served at the behest of President George W. Bush as member of the Injury Research Grant Review Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2002-2005. Dr. Faria, a Board Certified Neurological Surgeon, was Clinical Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History at Mercer University School of Medicine. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent—America, Guns, and Freedom (2019);Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (April 2023); Cuba’s Eternal Revolution through the Prism of Insurgency, Socialism, and Espionage (July 2023); Stalin, Mao, Communism, and the 21st Century Aftermath in Russia and China (2024); and Contrasting Ideals and Ends in the American and French Revolutions (in press). His next book is The Roman Republic, History, Myths, Politics, and Novelistic Historiography— the last five books by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.

This article was excerpted from Dr. Miguel A. Faria’s book America, Guns, and Freedom (2019), Chapter 20.

This article may be cited as: Faria MA. The Thieves of the Gulag Archipelago. HaciendaPublishing.com, September 1, 2024. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/the-thieves-of-the-gulag-archipelago-by-miguel-a-faria-jr-md/.

Copyright © 2019, 2024 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.